Thoughts from a scientist who is a Christian (not a Christian Scientist)

Will Evolutionists Ever Learn?

Aug.18,2010

Cover of the June 25, 2010 edition of the journal Cell, which put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the primary cilium is useless.

Evolutionists are very fond of the idea that there are useless things scattered throughout the living world. Darwin suspected that there were many, many useless organs in several members of the animal kingdom. After all, since he thought “higher” animals evolved from “lower” animals, he assumed that some of the important organs in the “lower” animals would serve no function in the “higher” animals. Nevertheless, since those organs were already there in the “lower” animals, they might continue to appear in the “higher” animals, because making a useless organ was not enough of a disadvantage for natural selection to remove it. He likened such useless organs to the silent letters in a word – they tell you things about the word’s origin but serve no function. In the same way, a useless organ serves no purpose for the animal, but it does tell you about the animal’s evolutionary ancestors.

Since Darwin, evolutionists have continued to point to useless organs and even useless DNA that supposedly litter the living world. The only problem is that annoying functions keep being discovered for these supposedly useless things. Up until about 2004, it was confidently taught that the human appendix is useless, but now we know it serves a vital function. It was once thought that large sections of the genomes of most organisms have “junk DNA” that serves no useful purpose, but time and time and time again, DNA that was confidently described as useless has been shown to have important functions. Evolutionists have been wrong time and time again when it comes to claiming that a given structure in creation is useless.

Well…we now know that evolutionists were wrong…AGAIN.

In 1898, Swiss anatomist K.W. Zimmerman was studying kidney cells and noticed a structure that looked like a tiny “hair” jutting out of each cell. Now it’s not unusual for some cells in the body to have “hairs” jutting out of them. They are called cilia (the singular is cilium), and they generally beat back and forth to produce motion. For example, the cells that line your bronchial tubes (which carry air to your lungs) have cilia. Those cilia beat back and forth to push mucus up the tubes. The mucus traps foreign particles from the air so that those particles don’t get into your lungs, and the cilia push the mucus up the tubes so you can swallow it to get rid of it.

The cilium that Zimmerman found in each kidney cell was odd, however. It didn’t move. It became known as the primary cilium, and as time went on, it was shown that almost all the cells in the human body (as well as almost all the cells in all mammals) have a primary cilium.

What did scientists think was the function of the primary cilium? They thought it had no function. Since evolutionists think that our ancestors were once single-celled organisms, and since many single-celled organisms use cilia to move around, it was thought that the primary cilium was simply a leftover vestige of evolution. It was supposedly a structure that was in our ancestors (single-celled organisms) and continued to be produced by our cells, even though it serves no purpose. Indeed, as one scientific paper states:

It was previously thought that primary cilia were vestigial remnants of a free-swimming unicellular predecessor1

That very paper ended up casting doubt on the evolutionary interpretation of the primary cilium. Not surprisingly, the more scientists learned about the primary cilium, the more they saw how wrong the evolutionary interpretation is.

Studies that focused on primary cilia in different kinds of mammalian cells showed that the they act as “antennas,” sensing signals that allow the cells to adjust what they are doing so as to help the organism as a whole.2 As time went on, studies began to link abnormalities in primary cilia to diseases such as cystic kidney disease.3

Well, a recent study4 has really put the last nail in the coffin of the idea that the primary cilium is a vestigial remnant of evolution. In this study, Jin and colleagues studied genes that have been implicated in Bardet–Biedl syndrome (BBS), a genetic disease that is fairly rare. It comes with a host of nasty symptoms, including blindness, obesity, and kidney malfunction.

They find that the proteins produced by these genes are involved in moving other proteins around in the primary cilum. If the BBS-related proteins are abnormal due to genetic mutation, they can’t do their job, and as a result, the primary cilium doesn’t work properly. Because the primary cilium doesn’t work properly, all sorts of cellular work doesn’t get done. For example, retinal cells cannot detect light properly, which eventually leads to the blindness mentioned above. The authors note that since a wide variety of symptoms can be linked to problems with the primary cilium, it is probably a very important part of each cell.

In the end, it is hard to imagine how the evolutionary interpretation of the primary cilium could have been more wrong. If evolutionists were just willing to learn the simple idea that God doesn’t make junk, they wouldn’t be so wrong about so many things.

Dr. Wile,
Have you considered creating a podcast that mirrored your blog? I think it would be very educational. The potential to reach others would be practically unlimited. I for one would be an avid listener.

We have been using your curriculum for many years. My dd will be using the chemistry course this year.

Very interesting! Science has changed so much since I studied in the 1970′s, I can scarcely keep up. What a blessing to have this blog link sent to me. Thanks for helping to keep me posted. I will certainly return here often.

David MetzAugust 25, 2010 10:10 pm

I only found out about you this week when a church member asked me to review 3 of your texts to use in homeschool of her two boys. While the books were ok for the most part, some textual content made me suspect your credentials, not to mention your intentions. So I decided to check you out online. You are quite the master of self promotion! You sure do like to flaunt that PhD, don’t you? I am thrilled to find out about you and your prolific online discourses. They will serve as a great resource next Spring during my lessons on analytical thinking and logical fallacies. You have certainly found yourself a lucrative niche market. Since your science credentials are legit, I can’t decide if you are a charlatan or just plain ignorant. I hope for your sake, that it is simply ignorance, because I certainly wouldn’t want to stand before the throne of God as a charlatan.

jlwileAugust 26, 2010 7:09 am

David, your comment is quite telling. When you disagree with someone, you suspect his or her credentials. When you find out the credentials are legit, you immediately assume bad things about the person. I personally prefer to look at a person’s arguments and the data he or she presents. I know which of us needs to be worried when he stands before the throne of God!

Please note that self-promotion is not why my books are popular. My books are popular because students who use them do amazingly well when they study university-level science, as you can learn here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Dr. Jay L. Wile

You have stumbled across Dr. Jay L. Wile's Blog. Dr. Wile holds an earned PhD from the University of Rochester in Nuclear Chemistry. He is best known for the "Exploring Creation with..." series of textbooks written for junior high and high school students who are being educated at home. He has also just released an elementary science series!You can read about that here.

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